26 R4 SG
by AmateurProfessional
Summary: "You know, when I was a kid I thought I'd be half way 'round the world by now." "Then why are you still here?" Now that was an exceptionally good question. Clara lifted her eyes from his checkered bow tie to his face. "26 R4 SG," she said. "And what does that mean?" He asked. "I'm sure you'll figure it out."
1. Chapter 1

"You know, when I was a kid I thought I'd be half way 'round the world by now."

"Then why are you still here?"

Now that was an exceptionally good question.

Clara looked down at her fingers that were pinching each other nervously. She bit her lip and raised her gaze, looking anywhere but his eyes. She found it difficult to look him in the face, which was preposterous because she'd been doing it all evening. Something was bothering her, though. Maybe it was the unsettling observation that his eyes seemed so much older than his face, or maybe it was the fact that they were suddenly venturing into dangerous territory, and things were starting to feel rather unbalanced.

But she couldn't just say nothing. She had told herself that she was going to attempt to be more honest. Not with other people, Clara had no problem with that. She had promised that she was going to be more honest with herself. So she lifted her eyes from his checkered bowtie to his face and said, "26 R4 SG." She had written that sequence, typed it, recited it in her head over a million times but she had never once said it out loud. It made her anxious, although she couldn't figure out why.

The man in front of her tilted his head slightly and his right cheek pulled his mouth into a crooked smile.

"And what does that mean?" He asked. His voice was low and on the verge of gravelly, as if he knew she wasn't going to answer but enjoyed the game anyway.

Clara folded her arms in front of her chest in order to stop her hands from shaking. Her lips moved into a smirk.

"You're clever, I'm sure you'll figure it out." She said, and with that, she turned around and entered her apartment building.

The man-who was all limbs and surprisingly little balance-swayed in amused silence for several seconds after the door closed. He was still smiling.

"I do wish you would stop ending conversations that way," he told the door, "but I suppose you're right." He spun toward the street and straightened his bowtie, "I am extremely clever."

* * *

Six Days Earlier

"Honey, you don't need that much butter on your popcorn, I promise."

Clara looked over at a tired but smiling mother as she lifted a very large tub of butter-soaked popcorn out of her daughter's hands. Clara smiled in spite of herself.

"Miss?" The young man on the other side of the counter tried to get her attention.

"Clara!" Angie elbowed her not-too-softly in the side.

"Right! Sorry, got distracted," Clara could physically feel Angie's eyes roll upwards as she handed over money for the drinks. She was really only buying them because she had already stuffed her purse full with so many bags of chips and candy that any bottles of soda just wouldn't fit. She handed Angie and Artie their drinks as they headed for the theatre.

"You're welcome," she said.

"Thanks Clara," they said in unison. Clara grinned.

The theatre was unexpectedly full when they entered. After a few uncomfortable seconds of searching, Clara found three seats next to each other right beside the aisle.

"Clara, could you sit on the inside?" Artie whispered. Clara put her hand on his shoulder as an answer. She performed the awkward sideways shuffle that was required to get to the seat. When she sat down she was surprised to hear a voice hardly above a whisper come from her right.

"Hello," it said. Clara's eyebrows twitched toward each other in confusion until she realized the man sitting next to her had said it.

"Hello," she whispered back. Clara turned away from him as the lights dimmed for the previews and she found herself smiling. She loved kind strangers, absolutely adored them in fact.

The movie trailer filled the theatre with a chorus of violins and then erupted in a crescendo of brass as the shots quickly cut from scene to scene. Clara glanced over at the man sitting next to her. His lips were parted and a wide, childish grin stretched across his face. He was even leaning forward in his seat a little and despite only knowing this man for a total of fifty-three seconds, Clara had to admit she found the act a bit endearing.

The rest of the movie proceeded in a similar fashion. Even though the beginning was awfully slow and somewhat cheesy, once it hit its stride it never stopped. She was grabbing onto the armrest with such a grip that you would think she was drowning and hanging on for dear life. When the end credits started rolling it took her a few seconds to remember how to unclench her fingers.

Clara heard the enthusiastic man next to her whisper, "Absolutely fantastic," and she couldn't agree more.

Three minutes into the credits the kids decided it was time to leave and they started walking down the uneven sized steps of the theatre. The lights had brightened a bit so Clara turned back to glance at the stranger she was sitting next to. He was very… long. Legs, arms, chin, you name it. And his hair was styled in a way she had never seen before, she couldn't even begin to describe it. Wait, yes she could. It was a floof. It started at one side of his head and went 'floof' over to the other. She grinned at her thought process until she realized she was still staring at him so she quickly turned around and nearly knocked Artie off his feet.

"Sorry!" She grabbed his shoulder to stop him from falling down.

"Forget how to walk, did you?" He teased.

"Oh shut it," Clara smacked him lightly on the arm.

The rest of the day did not go as smoothly. It started, as it often did, with Clara requesting that Angie do something. In this case, it was to turn the television off and help her with the dishes. And Angie responded, as she often did, with an angry comment about how Clara was not her mother, only this time she seemed exceedingly hostile.

"I wasn't trying to-" Clara started.

"Just shut _up_ Clara! Honestly, you've been here for almost a year and somehow you manage to get even more annoying every single day! You know, nobody asked _me_ if I was okay with you bossing me around all the time. Do you have any idea how insanely obnoxious you can be? So no, I won't help with the dishes. You can do them because _it's your job_," Angie yelled. She pushed herself off the couch and bolted up the stairs so fast Clara thought she could see a cloud of dust rise behind her.

"Angie!" Clara called after her.

"Just leave me alone!"

Clara stood by the sink in stunned silence. She had experience with moody teenagers, but Angie had never said anything like that before. She was about to go upstairs and ask what was going on until her eyes found the calendar. She closed her lips and exhaled through her nose. Of course. Clara knew what Angie was doing, and she couldn't say she blamed her.

Clara gave Angie half an hour to herself before she figured she should go talk to her. She walked upstairs and used one knuckle to tap on Angie's door.

"Angie?" She tried.

"Clara, I already told you I'm not doing the dishes."

"No, it's not about that," Clara said. "I know what tomorrow is, and I understand why you yelled."

"No you don't," Angie said.

"Can I come in please?" Clara asked. She was met with silence, just enough to think that maybe Angie had fallen asleep until she answered.

"Whatever."

Clara pushed the door open and found Angie sitting on the floor with her back against her bed and her knees pulled up to her chest. Without a word, Clara sat down next to her.

"Are you gonna yell at me again if I start talking to you?" She asked.

"No."

A few seconds of silence.

"It's been a year since you lost her," Clara stated.

"Three hundred sixty-four days," Angie said. Clara looked at her hands in her lap.

"And every time I tell you to do something it makes you think that she should be here. That she should be the one telling you to do it instead," Clara said quietly. "And it breaks your heart." She looked over at Angie. "Am I right?"

Clara noticed Angie kept swallowing over and over again, as if to keep herself from crying. She was shivering too. She leaned over and rested her head on Clara's shoulder.

"I miss my mum, Clara," her voice shook and she started crying. "I miss her so much."

Clara took one of Angie's hands in her own and kissed the top of her head.

"I just don't know what to do," Angie whispered.

"Well, for starters, you're going to sit with me and you're going to cry because it hurts, and because it mattered. Because _she_ mattered. Then when your exhaustion outweighs your sadness, you're going to go to bed. And then, for the rest of your life, you're going to live. You're going to learn. You're going to explore and discover and graduate and fall in love and stay up all night watching reruns of old TV shows and go to the shop at two in the morning to buy ice cream just because you can. Your mother gave you your life you know, so it's your responsibility to use every single day of it, and you're going to remember her forever and always. That's what you're going to do," Clara said. Her eyes started to sting and her throat had started to hurt but she swallowed it down.

"Will it ever get any easier?" Angie asked. What a difficult question. Clara thought about it for a moment.

"I think so, yeah. After a while, when the empty feeling starts to fill itself up again, it gets a bit easier. You might move on, you might not, but you know that little ache in your stomach that you get when you remember what her laugh sounded like? That never really goes away. And that's okay. It's just a reminder that she did her job well, maybe even a little too well." Clara answered. Angie sat quietly for a while, absorbing Clara's words like gospel.

"How is it that you always know exactly what to say?" She asked. Clara smiled.

"I took a class at University," she said. She decided not to bring her own mother into this. Angie already knew that Clara's mum died when Clara was sixteen, and neither of them needed reminding. But truthfully Clara knew exactly what to say because she'd been giving herself the same advice for nearly eight years.


	2. Chapter 2

Five Days Earlier

Clara once saw an ad for a television program called "The Worst Possible Inventions" and she couldn't stop thinking about it on the way home from the secondary school she taught at. She watched an episode a few weeks ago where they counted down from ten to the number one worst invention of the 90's. It ended up being that awful paper clip that drooled all over every single word document you opened up. At the time, Clara had agreed. But sitting on a crowded subway while trying to grade grammar worksheets half-heartedly filled out by apathetic seventh years on her way home from the start of what could only be a dreadful week, Clara changed her mind. The worst invention, by far, was definitely Mondays.

Clara was halfway down a page when the train lurched forward, causing her to leave an obscene red line through the middle of the worksheet. She groaned before deciding to give up and finish her work in her apartment. The car was much too crowded for her to put away the stack of papers so she clutched them to her chest instead.

The train slowed to a stop at her station and she moved to get off. She was walking away from the train when she thought she heard her name from somewhere behind her. Clara turned her head while still walking forward. That was her first mistake. Not two seconds after she looked behind her did she run smack into someone. A noise about the equivalent of a squeak came out of her as she faced forward. It was a miracle she didn't drop anything.

"Sorry," she rushed out.

"Quite alright," the man said. Clara looked up to meet his eyes and was thankful he didn't share her bad temper.

"Do you always run into people, or is it just when I'm around?" He asked. Clara had only a moment to be confused before the man was walking away from her. She barely got a glimpse of his brown hair before he slid into the closing doors of the train.

Without meaning to, Clara stood in the station for a solid two minutes before realizing the train had already left. She couldn't for the life of her understand what the man had meant until she remembered the cinema.

_Hang on,_ she thought, _was that the man I was sitting next to? The nine year old trapped in an adult's body? The man with the floof?_

She turned to exit the station and the thought was pushed out of her head as she recalled the amount of work she had waiting for her once she got home.

* * *

Four Days Earlier

Clara usually wasn't one to mope, but after four years of teaching seventh year English when she really wanted to be working with year threes, she allowed herself this one day to hate her job.

Clara was sitting in a café and staring at a cup of hot chocolate that was growing increasingly colder. She had opted to sit in the corner of the café near the window to minimize the noise. The headache she'd had since ten o'clock was not getting any better. Clara rested her elbows on the table around her hot chocolate, pressed her palms to her ears and closed her eyes.

She was thinking about how she got stuck teaching pre-pubescent teenagers when she worked so much better with younger kids who were actually excited to learn. It wasn't anyone's fault, really. She had applied at the school four years ago and there just weren't any spots open besides the one she got. Clara realized she was rather lucky to have gotten the job at all, and figured she ought to be more grateful, but then she thought about how that day in class, one of her students had drawn a certain piece of male anatomy on the white board in permanent marker, and she decided she didn't care if she was being selfish.

A muffled noise made itself heard somewhere to her left and Clara removed her hands from her ears. She looked to her left and saw a man looking at her expectantly.

"Sorry, what was that?" She asked.

"I was just wondering if that seat was taken," the man answered. Clara looked to the empty seat across from her.

"No, not at all," she said. The man smiled and sat down, he looked like he was about to say something but Clara spoke first.

"You weren't standing there for long, were you?" She said.

"Well I wasn't staring if that's what you're worried about," he said. Clara narrowed her eyes. "You just looked like you could use a person to vent to, and today must be your lucky day, because I happen to be a person," he continued.

Clara looked at him for a few seconds before she realized who she was talking to.

"Hang on," she said, "you're that same man. I sat next to you at the cinema didn't I? And then I ran into you at the station. Are you following me?"

The man looked startled.

"No! I mean… No! The first two times were accidents, complete coincidence," he rushed out.

"And this time?" Clara asked.

"Well I," he started, but he stopped and took a deep breath. "Can I introduce myself first?"

Clara bit her tongue to hide the fact that she was enjoying how flustered he was getting.

"Sure," she said. He took another breath.

"My name is John Smith. I'm _not_ a stalker," he specified. "In my spare time I like to read, _not_ follow people around. And I ran into you at the station by _accident_ and figured you were heading home because it was nearing five o'clock. I figured you lived within walking distance of the station or else you wouldn't have got off at that stop. And I also figured you must be a teacher of some sort since you were holding those worksheets when you ran into me, and if _I_ worked with children day in and day out, I probably wouldn't be feeling too hot after school on a Tuesday, so I would go somewhere to relax. So I put that all together and found this place," he explained.

Clara narrowed her eyes again.

"I could've gone home to relax," she said.

"You could've," he acknowledged, "but then we wouldn't be having this conversation."

"That's an awful lot of guesswork," Clara stated.

"No it's not. I'm just tremendously clever," John answered.

"I could've gotten this hot chocolate to go. I could've had a fantastic day and decided to go buy ice cream instead. I could've had errands to run after school. Just because you happened to find me here doesn't make you a genius," Clara said. She couldn't quite tell if this man was sweet or senile.

"I think you're missing the point," he said.

"Which is?"

"That you _didn't_ do any of those things, and I _did_ find you here, and we're having a conversation," he replied. Clara was quiet for a minute.

"Alright, fine. Suppose you did have a sudden stroke of genius. Why go through all the trouble of figuring out where I'd be?" She asked. John opened his mouth to answer but shut it just as quickly.

"I don't really know," he seemed confused, "I ran into you twice in two days and maybe I took it as a sign from the universe. Maybe I found a hidden meaning when there wasn't one to find. Or maybe…" he looked down and the tiniest frown found its way to his face.

"Maybe what?" Clara asked. She might never admit it, but she found the way he talked incredibly captivating. The fact that he was cute didn't hurt either.

John cleared his throat and looked back up at her.

"Or maybe I thought you were pretty and I wanted to get to know you better," he finished. Clara had a feeling that wasn't what he was originally planning to say, but the blush in his cheeks made it seem more authentic, so she cast away the idea. Clara smiled.

"Okay, I've got a question, it's been bugging me since you sat down," she said.

"Ask away," he said.

"Why the bowtie?" She asked. John seemed taken aback by the sudden change in subject. He looked at his reflection in the window of the café and straightened his blue bowtie.

"Because it looks cool," he said. Clara moved to comment on that but he interrupted her.

"Do _not_ contradict me on this. I don't care what you think Ms. Snarky," he said.

"Ms. Snarky?" She crossed her arms.

"Well you haven't actually told me your name have you?" He countered. Clara smirked.

"Fair enough. I'm Clara," she said.

"Got a last name?"

"Of course."

"Oh good, it's nice to meet you Clara Ofcourse," he smirked. She let out a genuine laugh.

"Oswald," she clarified.

"Sorry Ms. Ofcourse, I didn't catch that last bit," he said. She laughed again.

"My name is Clara Oswald you loon," she answered. They chuckled together and John took a sip of his drink that Clara hadn't realized he was holding until then. She suddenly remembered she had a hot chocolate sitting on the table, although it probably wasn't very hot anymore. She decided she was finished with it. Before the silence got awkward, John asked her a question.

"So did I help?"

"Help what?" Clara questioned.

"Your bad mood. You were in the middle of a headache weren't you? Not many people cover their ears in a nearly silent café," he said. Clara observed him for a moment.

"You are perceptive, aren't you?" He grinned at that. "Yes, I did have a headache, and yes you did help. Thank you," she said. Then she realized what time it was.

"Oh, I'm sorry I have to go, I promised dinner with a friend," she apologized. She really was sorry, she was rather enjoying the conversation.

"Oh, that's fine, go ahead. But if I did want to talk to you again, I'm not saying I do, but hypothetically, if I did, where would you suggest I go?" He asked leaning back in his chair. Clara stood up to leave and took a few steps away before turning around.

"You're clever, Mr. Smith, I'm sure you'll figure it out," she said, then she walked out the door, leaving a smiling John Smith looking after her.


	3. Chapter 3

Two Days Earlier

Out the window to her right, Clara observed five o'clock London. I was her favorite time of day, when the sun hadn't quite started to set but it was on its way, so it left a bluish purple tint on the sidewalks. She watched the faces of people walking by and tried to imagine what they were thinking. It was a hobby of hers, and it helped her distract herself. But distractions only helped for so long.

The door of the café opened, causing the bells attached to it to jingle. Clara's eyes snapped up to the entrance, just like they had the last five times she heard the bells. She was let down for the sixth time when she realized it wasn't John who entered. Her gaze fell back down to her hot chocolate at the same table she'd been sitting at for the third day in a row.

_Control yourself Clara, why are you getting so worked up over a guy?_ She scolded herself. Her inner monologue had a point. They had really only shared one conversation, plus two sentences at the train station.

_Alright fine, I don't care if he comes or not. I came here for hot chocolate, I had a rough day at work,_ she lied to herself. It almost worked too, but as fate would have it, the bells rang a seventh time.

_Don't look up. I swear Clara, if you look up I will kick you so hard—_

"Hello," his voice interrupted her thoughts. She looked up and lo and behold, John Smith was there with his stupid cheeky grin.

"You certainly took your time getting here," Clara challenged. John frowned which made his chin jut out even farther than it normally did.

"Oh so it's my fault then. You know, you could have just told me a time and a place like a normal person," he replied.

"But you're far too clever for that, aren't you?" Clara teased. John laughed.

"Interesting fashion choice," Clara commented on his floor length purple jacket with a matching bowtie.

"Shut up. It's cool," John said as he pulled out his chair, "and I already told you I don't care much for your snarky comments."

John shrugged off his jacket and draped it on the back of his chair and in doing so, revealed the suspenders he was wearing. Clara raised her eyebrows. He looked like he should be teaching a world history class at a University. Clara also noticed he hadn't bought himself a drink. She tried to not overanalyze that. She failed.

_It means he came here with the sole intent to talk to you_, she thought. Then,_ shut up, you're being stupid._

"So Clara, I figure we have two options," John said.

"Which are?"

"Well, we can spend approximately seven minutes engaging in small talk wherein I ask you about your day and then you ask me about my day and then we comment on the lovely weather we've been having and how it really is quite uncommon weather for February in London," John said.

"And the other option?" Clara asked. John leaned forward in his chair and folded his fingers together on the table.

"We could skip all that, go on a walk, and talk about things of actual importance," he said.

"Someone's a bit keen, aren't they," Clara said, crossing her arms with a smirk.

"Not unless that someone's you," he deflected.

"Ooh, nicely executed," Clara praised. John nodded to accept the compliment. He leaned back in his seat.

"So what do you say?" John asked. Clara tried do diffuse her excitement by taking a sip of her drink.

"I say," she began, "that I've only known you for about forty minutes, collectively, and you could be an extremely charming homicidal maniac. So why would I go on a walk with a potential Moriarty?"

John examined her curiously before responding.

"Okay I'm going to take that in the best possible light because Moriarty was, in fact, a genius, but that doesn't mean I'm not a little bit offended," he said. Clara grinned.

"I just meant that I don't know that much about you," she clarified.

"And you'd like to start somewhere with witnesses," he said, "fair enough. Alright, buckle your seatbelt Ms. Oswald, you're about to get to know me."

Clara put her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her palm. She hoped she didn't look too eager. Clara had to remind herself to look at his eyes and not his lips while he was talking. Then she realized how weird that was._ Clara what the hell are you doing? You're not supposed to get this attached. You know what happens if you do._

"Well for starters, I'm twenty-eight years old. I went to University to study engineering, physical science, and mathematics. I wanted to be an astronaut, you see. But in my third year of University, things started to get very real very quickly and I realized that my chances of actually becoming a successful astronaut were extremely slim. There aren't very many of them you know. And I, uh," he looked down and cleared his throat like he was about to say something he would regret, "I changed my plans. I actually ended up dropping out at the end of that year."

Clara thought about that for a moment.

"You dropped out of University because you didn't want to be rejected? You didn't even try?" She asked. John gave her a sour look.

"Don't you think it's better I quit on my own terms instead of being told I'm not good enough?" He said defensively. Clara felt like that sentence meant a lot more to him than he was letting on.

"Maybe," she said. "It just doesn't seem fair to the part of you that wants to see the stars. What do you do now anyway?"

"I work in a toy shop in the city," he said.

"Really? That's quite a change in career," Clara commented. She wasn't sure why she was so upset to find out he had given up.

"At least I actually like my job," he said pointedly. Clara's mouth opened and she raised her eyebrows.

"Well, someone's a bit on edge, aren't they? And I got a hell of a lot closer to my dream job than you did," she said. The conversation was getting rather tense and Clara had no idea why. They both realized it at the same time and they handled it by looking at each other in silence for a nearly uncomfortable amount of time.

"That took a bit of a turn, didn't it?" He said quietly. Clara nodded and took a sip of her hot chocolate, although she didn't really taste it.

"I'm sorry," he said. Clara didn't understand why he was apologizing. It wasn't his fault, was it?

"How about we start over? I believe it's your turn to share," he said with a lighter tone.

As they moved past that uncomfortable moment Clara laid down some ground rules for herself. _Don't talk about mum. Don't mention anything from the ages of twelve to fifteen because he'll never let you forget it. And do not, under any circumstances, say a word about how you sat here for three and half hours yesterday waiting for him to show up._

"Well I was born in Lancashire," she started.

"I knew it," John interrupted. Clara put on her most sarcastic face.

"Of _course_ you did," she said.

"I do love a skeptic," he grinned.

"Alright fine, enlighten me," she insisted.

"Your accent," he said simply. Clara scoffed.

"Okay, Sherlock," she countered.

"You know, I can't be Sherlock _and_ Moriarty, you're going to have to pick one eventually," John reasoned. Clara studied him, not too long that it was uncomfortable, but long enough to wonder what would happen if she kept him in her life for a while.

"You know what? I think I'll take you up on that walk," she said.


	4. Chapter 4

The Night Before

The obstreperous noise of the telephone woke John Smith out of a much deserved sleep. It took eleven seconds for him just to wake up enough to realize that his phone was ringing. He looked at the clock sitting on the nightstand right behind his phone. 11:56. He had gotten home from his double shift at work at half past ten and collapsed on his bed soon after. His shoes were still on his feet. After a second of thought, he decided to let the call go to voicemail.

His eyes were just on the verge of closing again when his phone rang a second time. John grumbled and reluctantly picked it up to read the caller ID. It was Rick.

"Rick, I don't have the night shift this week," he said after he answered the call. It was the only possible reason Rick would be calling him at this time of night.

"No, I know that, but…" Rick said nervously. John waited for the rest of the sentence but it never came.

"But…? Rick, why are you calling me?" John said a little angrier than he meant to.

"Well, uh, your shift ended at ten, right?" Rick asked.

"Yes…" John replied.

"And you locked all the doors?"

"Yes…" Now it was John's turn to feel nervous. "Rick, what's going on?"

"Well, my shift is supposed to start at midnight, I gotta do inventory, right? But the front door was open when I got here, and, uh," Rick's thought was incomplete.

"Rick! Finish your sentences, for the love of—"

"We've been robbed!" Rick shouted. The sudden increase in volume made John sit up in his bed. "The cash register's empty and about three hundred dollars worth of merchandise is gone, and I haven't even checked the computer yet but I'm gonna bet the system was hacked, or else the alarms would've gone off."

"Oh my God," John said. He was completely awake now.

"Yeah," Rick said, "you know what that means." John covered his face with his free hand.

"Credit card numbers, customer and employee information," John listed.

"All up for grabs," Rick finished. John cursed under his breath.

"What kind of moron robs a toy store?!" John exclaimed.

"The poor and desperate kind?" Rick supplied. John groaned.

"Okay, I'm on my way, when I hang up call the police, I'll call Jennifer," John directed.

"She's not going to like this," Rick stated the obvious.

"Yes, I know, I'll make sure to tell her it wasn't your fault. If she's going to fire anybody, it's going to be me," John assured his coworker.

"Good luck mate," Rick said. John ended the call.

It was nearly two am before John could relax even the slightest bit. He was slumped against the checkout desk trying to stay awake while two police officers talked to Rick near the door.

"I just came here to do inventory, I do it once a month," Rick was explaining.

"And the door was just open?" One of the officers asked.

"Yeah, it wasn't broken or anythin', and there was no mess inside, just a bunch of stuff missing," Rick said.

"Alright, thank you, that'll be all for now," the other officer said. The pair of them turned and headed for John. _Oh, no._ He thought. He wasn't sure why he felt so guilty, he locked all the doors, he was sure of it.

"Were you the last one in the store before the robbery?" The taller of the two officers asked him. John stood up straighter.

"Um, yes."

"You did lock up, yes?" The other one said. They were quite the duo.

"Yes," John said. He wasn't sure he was able to say words with more than one syllable.

"Did anything seem strange today? Any unusual customers?"

"No."

"What time did you leave?" It was the taller one this time.

"Ten," John answered. The officers turned toward each other and started talking.

"That gives us about a two hour window," one said. Then he turned to John again, "do you have security cameras installed?"

"Yes, but they probably got hacked along with the computers, you could check though," he said. "This wasn't my fault, was it?" He asked after a stretch of silence.

"Not if you locked the doors like you said you did, just looks like a standard robbery," the tall one said. John forgot about his posture and leaned on the checkout desk. _Thank God,_ he thought.

When his boss arrived just after two, John relayed the story. He wasn't getting fired. In fact, Jennifer was extremely understanding. 'Wrong shift at the wrong time,' she said. Shortly after that she told John to go home and get some sleep.

"Oh, and I know you're not scheduled to come in tomorrow but I would really appreciate it if you did. We're going to need all hands on deck to clean this mess up," Jennifer said.

Thirty-four minutes later John was fast asleep. His shoes were still on.

* * *

The last thing Clara wanted to do was spend Valentine's Day with a bunch of teenagers, but when you're a teacher, you don't really have much of a choice. Clara noticed that the amount of side conversations and gossip nearly doubled on Valentine's Day and it made it extraordinarily hard to teach. When the final bell rang and her class cleared out, she slumped over on her desk just to enjoy the silence. Friday couldn't have come sooner.

She was on her way out the door when she realized she had no plans for Valentine's Day. A thought struck her mind. _Clara, no, that's stupid,_ she thought. Then,_ I don't care if it's stupid, it'll surprise him._ She noticed she'd been having an awful lot of back and forth with her inner monologue lately.

* * *

John ended up going back to work around noon. He was assigned to the computer in the front corner of the store since he was the most tech-savvy of the employees. Four and a half hours later, he still hadn't moved from the chair. His eyes were starting to strain and his fingers were cramping up and he was so out of it that he hardly noticed when the door opened and a young woman stepped inside.

"No purple jacket today, then?" She said. It was then that John decided to look up.

"Clara!" He said as a smile inadvertently formed on his lips. His fingers were still moving across the keyboard.

"Hello," she said. She rested her elbows on the desk next to the computer.

"How did you know where I work?" John asked, returning his gaze to the screen.

"You mentioned a toy shop so I picked one and started from there," he heard. John shook his head in mock disappointment.

"Not quite up to Sherlock's standards but it's effective, I'll give you that," he said.

"Well you found me the last two times, I figured it was my turn," Clara replied.

"I appreciate it, I really do, but you could not have picked a worse day," John admitted.

"Why? Is Valentine's Day a busy time for you?" Clara asked, looking around the store. A lot of the shelves did seem to be empty.

John's eyes widened. With everything that happened he had forgotten what day it was. He cleared his throat to hide his shock.

"Um, not particularly, but we were robbed last night," he explained.

"What? What kind of lunatic robs a toy store?" Clara asked.

"That's what I said!" John exclaimed. "Anyway, I am sorry, I had planned to take you out tonight, but I got distracted and forgot to make a reservation," he confessed.

"That's alright," Clara said. She reached across the desk and grabbed a scrap piece of paper and a pen. "Just call me if you ever get out of here, we'll figure something out." She held the paper out to him. John finally stopped typing in order to grab it.

"Your number? You're not going to send me on a manhunt through London?" He teased. The corner of his mouth pulled into a smile.

"Fine, give the number back and I'll hand you a treasure map instead," Clara retorted. John laughed.

"No thank you, I think I'll keep this," he said, sliding the paper into his pocket.

"So I'll see you tonight then?" Clara said backing up towards the door.

"Yes, I believe you will," John replied. If he was looking up, he would have seen Clara grin ear to ear before walking out the door.

A minute after Clara left the shop, John was still smiling at his computer screen.

"How did someone like you manage to get a girl like that?" He heard from across the room.

"Shut up Rick."

The sun had already set by the time John buzzed Clara's apartment. A minute later Clara met him downstairs and they got in John's car.

"Hang on, if you've got a car, why were you at the station the other day?" Clara asked.

"I think it's important to widen one's horizons when it comes to transportation," John explained. Clara gave him a weird look from the passenger seat even though she knew he couldn't see her.

"You certainly are strange," she said.

"What's wrong with strange?" He questioned.

"Nothing, it's just... different," Clara stated, finally settling on a word. "And you still haven't told me where we're going either. This is like some crazy trust exercise."

"Well it's a good thing you trust me then," John smirked.

John parked the car across the street from a not-too-fancy but incredibly busy restaurant. As they walked toward it, Clara noticed there were tables in a patio area just outside the building filled with dining couples and surrounded by yellow twinkling lights. It was romantic in the most cliché sense of the word. Clara loved it.

"I thought you said you didn't make a reservation," she remembered.

"Shhh," John put a finger to his lips.

They entered the restaurant and in the atrium, a man in a suit stood behind a podium that had a paper with a list of names on it.

"Wait here," John said quietly without moving his lips. Clara did as she was told. John grabbed something out his jacket pocket and walked toward the suited man. He gave him a firm handshake and whispered a few words in his ear. The man looked down at their hands and then took a step backward.

"Right this way sir," he said with a nod. John turned back to Clara, held his arm out, and flicked his head in the direction the man was walking.

Clara linked her arm in his and whispered, "Did we just steal someone's reservation?"

"No, of course not. That would be rude," he said. Then he glanced at her and winked.

Until that night, Clara had no idea how much fun a simple dinner could be. The conversation between the two flowed so easily, it wasn't until her plate was empty that she realized they had been talking for nearly two hours.

In the car on the way home, Clara said, "I hope we didn't cause any trouble with that reservation."

"Relax, no one yelled, no one kicked us out, everything's fine," John said, "and I also got to act all suave. It was very exciting."

"Okay James Bond. I just hope we didn't ruin anyone's Valentine's Day," Clara said.

"I know you feel guilty, but admit it, you had a great time and you deserved it," John said. "And you never answered my question."

"Which question?"

"I asked you about the most exciting place you've been," he reminded her as he parked in front of the apartment complex. They were half way up the front walk before she answered him.

"I've actually never left Britain," Clara admitted.

"Really? You seem like the adventurous type," John commented.

"You know, when I was a kid I thought I'd be half way 'round the world by now," Clara said as they reached the door.

"Then why are you still here?"

That night, as Clara lay in bed, she thought about how she answered John's question. She didn't understand why she felt so anxious. It was just a sequence of numbers and letters and it wasn't even a particularly groundbreaking fact about herself. Clara rolled onto her side. Was it really as important as she made it sound? Maybe she had fabricated all this extra meaning and it's been building up ever since she was a teenager. Maybe the real reason she never left Britain was because she had a secret fear of airplanes. Clara groaned and buried her face in her pillow. _If you're putting this much thought into it, it means it's important to you, _she thought. And with that thought ringing in her ears, she eventually fell asleep.

* * *

**AN: Just to answer some questions, at this moment in time, John Smith is completely, 100% human.**


	5. Chapter 5

"Why can't teenagers act like civilized young people for once! Just one day, that's all I'm asking for," Clara moaned.

"Did you just say 'teenager' and 'civilized' in the same sentence?" John asked over the phone.

"Alright, I get your point," Clara said.

She was eating her lunch in her classroom for the fifth day that week. She usually tried to avoid eating where she taught, but John had been calling her every day on her break and she didn't want anyone to eavesdrop. It was better if no one at work knew she was seeing someone. The endless questions would make her want to drown herself. Of course, by staying in her room all week, Clara had attracted different comments such as, "are you feeling okay?" and "did I do something to offend you?" and her personal favorite, "I know you love your job Clara, but there is such a thing as too much."

Please. Four out of five days of the week, Clara couldn't wait to get out there, and the fifth day was Friday. No, Clara would rather keep her coworkers in the dark about her social life.

"Are they really that bad?" John asked. He was spending his lunch break spinning around in the swivel chair at the computer desk while he flipped a coin over and over again, betting himself which way it would land.

"Have you been listening to a word I've been saying for the last twenty minutes?" Clara said. "Of course they're that bad. Why can't I just work with third years like I originally planned? You know, eight year olds who aren't going through puberty and don't swear every other word. Do you think Mrs. Atkinson would trade jobs with me? She teaches third years."

"It sounds like you, Clara, are having a second semester crisis," John observed.

"I just want it to be winter break again," Clara said tiredly.

"Well at least you _get_ a winter break, and a summer one too, for that matter. That hardly seems fair," John said as he looked around at the customers browsing the shelves in the shop.

"Yeah, I suppose that's true," Clara admitted. "Hey, have they found the guy who robbed you yet?"

"No they have not," John said as he pushed off the desk with his foot and sent himself spinning wildly. "He may have been an idiot for robbing a toy shop but he was a clever idiot."

"And that, my dear children, is what we call an oxymoron," Clara said, sounding as if she were teaching her class.

John heard a bell ringing over the phone shortly followed by Clara groaning.

"Lunch over?" He asked.

"Looks that way," Clara said. "Um, do you want to come to my place tonight? The class is supposed to watch Romeo and Juliet next week and I just realized I've never actually seen it."

"Movie night, ay? Sounds fantastic," John said. "I'll see you tonight."

* * *

Clara had just finished making tea when John buzzed from downstairs. She let him up and looked around her apartment. It wasn't exactly neat but it would have to do. John arrived at the door so quickly Clara thought he must've run up the stairs. She opened the door.

"John, it's movie night, why are you still wearing suspenders and your tweed blazer? It hardly seems comfortable," Clara said, looking down at her pajamas.

"It's never just a simple 'hello' with you, is it? And nonsense, it's plenty comfortable," he responded as they walked in. "Your apartment's lovely."

"I know it's a bit small," Clara said.

"The word you're looking for is quaint," John corrected, "and I think it suits you."

"Is that some roundabout way of telling me I'm small?" Clara asked crossing her arms.

"No! No, I just meant," John stuttered. Clara laughed.

"I'm kidding," she said. John squinted at her before taking off his jacket and draping it over the back of the couch.

"So Romeo and Juliet is quite an old movie, have you got it on VHS or something?" John changed the subject.

"Um, no. It's on Netflix," Clara explained.

"Right," John said, trying to act like he knew that already. Clara smirked as she sat down and started the movie. John moved to join her.

"Shakespeare was quite the genius, and rather charming too," John said.

"You say that like you knew him," Clara replied. John's eyebrows scrunched together in confusion.

"It did sound like that, didn't it," he said. Then he laughed, "If only."

"Did you know the Shakespeare coat of arms has an eagle on it that's holding a spear in its talon?" John asked.

"I did not know that," Clara said without looking at him. They got two minutes into the movie before John spouted more trivia.

"Did you know that in his will, the only thing Shakespeare left his wife was his second best bed?" John questioned.

"John if you don't shut up, I'm going to kick you out," Clara warned while she propped her legs up on the coffee table. John put his hands up in surrender and moved his fingers across his lips like he was closing a zipper.

Forty-five minutes into the movie, the seating arrangement changed when John lied on his side and rested his head on Clara's lap. Neither of them could pinpoint the exact moment when Clara started running her fingers through his hair, it just sort of happened.

They watched Romeo and Juliet lock eyes across a ballroom, they watched Romeo kill Tybalt, and they watched Juliet fake her death before either of them spoke again.

"Do you think it's possible for any two people to fall in love so quickly?" Clara asked, hoping the question didn't sound too awkward.

"No," John said simply. The Nurse discovered Juliet's seemingly dead body.

"Care to elaborate?" Clara requested.

"Well, I just think it takes time for that sort of connection to form. Some things though, like lust, attraction, intrigue, those can all solidify within days, minutes even," John glanced at Clara, she wasn't looking, "but love… Love takes longer," he explained. He thought he sounded like a dictionary but Clara didn't seem to notice. "That's what I believe, anyway."

"Makes sense," she said. "I think I'll make that an essay question." John shifted so he was lying on his back and looking up at her.

"Always the teacher," he remarked.

"Just because I don't like my job doesn't mean I have to be bad at it," she said, "and you're supposed to be watching the movie, not me," she gave him a pointed look.

"Eh, I've already seen it," he returned with a grin.


	6. Chapter 6

**AN: Just an explanation, I'm American so if I accidentally said dollars instead of pounds or anything like that, now you know why.**

* * *

The worst part was the few seconds after she ended the call. The empty silence that filled itself up with fabricated scenarios that were no doubt worse than the truth made her want to scream. Clara set her phone down on the counter of her apartment. She looked at her hands and noticed they were shaking like a child that just lost its mother. Clara's breath came in shallow gasps and she almost lost control until she slammed her fist on the counter to give her brain something else to focus on. She put her elbows on either side of the phone and set her forehead on her open palms. Clara took three slow deep breaths, and then she went to her room and started throwing clothes into a suitcase.

The ride to Lancashire was about three hours long, and seven minutes into it Clara was already starting to fidget. She needed to talk to someone, and there was only one person in the world she could think of to call.

"Hello?" John said. Clara closed her eyes and took refuge in the sound of his voice. She leaned against the window of the train. "Clara, you there?" John asked when Clara didn't respond.

"I'm going to Lancashire," Clara said. She was going to say more but the lump in her throat stopped her.

"Ah, back to the mother ship I see. I hope it's not permanent, I was enjoying your company," John said.

"No, it's not-" her voice cracked, "It's not permanent."

John's voice grew serious. "Clara… Are you alright?" He asked. Clara took an uneven breath.

"It's my dad. He's had a heart attack," she said.

"Oh my God… Clara," John said quietly. "Is he…?"

"Alive?" Clara finished the question for him. "Yes."

She heard John sigh in relief.

"He's going to be okay then?" He asked.

"I think so, yeah. He's in a hospital right now," Clara explained.

Clara's eyes were still closed and she didn't bother opening them. She sat in the front of the train car that was empty save a middle aged man who seemed to be asleep. Clara tucked one of her legs under the other and sighed.

"Are _you_ okay?"John asked.

"I don't know. I mean, I will be once I see him, but…" Clara stopped. "Are you busy, John?"

"No, I'm at home. Why?" He said.

"Nothing, I just—if you were doing something important I didn't want to interrupt," Clara said.

"And you don't think you're important?" John asked her. Clara opened her eyes at that. She didn't have an answer. "It sounds to me like you need a distraction. Tell you what, I am about to embark on a movie marathon, and I'm going to give you a very detailed commentary of what I'm watching while using my best American accent in the hopes that you don't drive yourself mad with worry. Deal?"

Clara chuckled. The nervous tingle that ran up and down her spine started to fade away. "Deal," she said.

John proved to have an awful American accent.

* * *

Clara never realized how ominous it felt to sit next to someone unconscious until she spent the night next to her father. She couldn't really tell exactly what was going on; all she knew was that her dad was hooked up to a bunch of machines that beeped occasionally and he had tubes pumping oxygen through his nose.

Before she sat down a nurse had told her that everything was fine and that he was expected to wake up in the morning, but as the hours dragged by it became harder and harder to tell the difference between getting better and getting worse.

Clara didn't realize how long she'd been listening to the beeping machines until John called her just after eleven.

"I was just about to go to bed, I wanted to make sure you were okay," he explained.

Clara smiled at his kindness. "I'm better now that I'm with him," she said as she got up and left the room. It felt weird to talk about her father when he was lying right next to her. "It's a bit unnerving though. I mean, I know he's going to get better, that's what the doctors told me anyway, but he's just… Lying there. I don't know, it just feels sort of," she struggled for the right word, "Sinister, you know?"

"I bet, yeah," John said, he sounded tired. "Is your mum there too?"

A cold wave of unexpected nervousness crashed against Clara's ribcage. "Um, no. She's, uh," Clara stumbled over her own words. This was the last thing she wanted to talk about. "She left when I was little," she stuttered. It was only a half lie and she hoped it wouldn't invite too many questions.

"Oh," John said. There were three unusually long seconds of silence before he continued. "Well are you alright? Have you had something to eat since you got there? I know it's probably hard to think of yourself at a time like this, so it's a good thing you've got me to do it for you," he said.

Clara moved the phone away from her ear so John wouldn't hear her sigh in relief at the change of subject. After a second she brought the phone back up.

"I'm a grown up you know, I'm aware of how to take care of myself," Clara said to disguise the fact that she hadn't actually eaten anything.

"Alright, just making sure. Doing my duty as a friend," he said.

Clara's lip rose into a half smile. "Hey John?"

"Yeah?" He sounded like he was about to start snoring.

"Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome."

"No, not just for tonight," she continued, "Thank you for everything really. For just being my friend, and for being the one person I could call about this."

"Really, the _one_ person?" He said skeptically.

"Well, yeah. You're kind of my best friend. My only friend, actually," Clara said. She hadn't realized it until she said it out loud, but John really was her only friend. She had coworkers she would talk to at lunch and she was always friendly with everybody she met, but no one really made an effort to stick around. It wasn't their fault. Clara was just an expert at keeping her heart to herself, a trick she'd been teaching herself since she was sixteen. Over the years she had forgotten why she never let anybody hold a piece of her heart, but as she was talking to John she remembered. Hearts are very, very breakable. But she remembered too late, because here she was, talking to a man who was holding hers with both hands.

"Well, lucky you. One pick out of seven billion people and you had the good fortune of picking me to be your best friend. I must say, you've hit the jackpot," John said.

"I cannot believe you just said that."

"Why, because it's just so true?" John teased.

"Because for one who prides himself on his intelligence, that sounded incredibly stupid," Clara said.

"Oh okay so _that's_ where this conversation is going. A shame, I thought it was actually going to be heartfelt for once," John complained.

"Well I was _trying_ to be sincere, it's not my fault you ruined it," Clara defended, and just like that, she forgot about keeping her heart to herself. It was much too late for that anyway.


	7. Chapter 7

It was seven minutes past eight in the morning when Clara walked through the glass doors of the hospital. She had wanted to spend the night in her father's room but John had convinced her to sleep in an actual bed so she ended up going back to her childhood home for the night.

Clara signed in at the front desk and headed up the stairs and down the hallway to her father's room on the right. She checked her phone before she walked in and saw that she had a missed call from John. She decided to send him a text.

_Hey, sorr—_

"Hello."

Clara choked on her breath as a string of surprise snapped up her back. Her phone clattered against the tile floor. When she looked up she saw her dad sitting up in his bed and smiling at her.

"Oh my stars," she gasped. "You scared me!"

"I just said hello," her father defended.

"Yeah, well the last time I saw you, you had tubes sticking out of your nose because you couldn't breathe on your own. I didn't really expect you to be talking," Clara said.

"Fine, I'll ask the nurse to leave a sign on my door that says 'Warning: Conscious' how does that sound?" He joked.

They looked at each other for a few silent seconds before Clara half-ran and hugged him. It was an awkward hug from an awkward position but what it lacked in grace it made up for in sentiment.

"So you're okay?" Clara asked after they pulled apart and she sat down. "You're actually, really okay?"

"Yes, totally fine. It was just a minor heart attack, not a big deal," he said.

"_Just_ a heart attack?! Dad, if heart attacks weren't a big deal they would call them heart inconveniences," Clara said forcefully. Then she looked down and softened her voice, "I was really scared you know. I got a call and I—I thought," _you were going to die, _"I just—I didn't want,"_ to lose you too_.

Somehow the ends of her sentences never came out. Her dad reached over and held her hand.

"Hey, it's okay," he said softly. "I'm still here, right? I'm breathing, I'm alive, unfortunately I'm still wearing this awful hospital gown, but you can't have everything I guess."

Clara smiled and suddenly she felt like she was sixteen again. In the weeks after her mother's death Clara used to have awful nightmares about her father dying as well, leaving Clara alone. She would wake up screaming and her dad would run into her room and hug her until she stopped crying. He would usually talk to her too, and he would say about the same thing he was saying to her now.

The moment was interrupted by the sound of a phone vibrating against the tile floor.

"Oh, I'd forgotten…" Clara said as she walked over to pick it up.

"Hello?" John's voice came from the other end. "You texted me saying 'Hey, sorrjfhgfyu,' and I don't know what that means."

Clara realized the message she was typing must have sent when the phone fell. "Oh, sorry. My dad scared me and I dropped my phone," she explained.

"Your dad's awake? He's okay?" John asked.

"Yeah, yeah he's fine," she answered, suddenly aware that her father was staring at her. She blushed and avoided eye contact. "Um listen, can I call you back? It's sort of a bad time."

"Yeah, of course, of course. I'm just glad everything's okay. We'll talk later," he said.

Clara pocketed her phone and sat back down. Her father stared at her expectantly but she didn't say anything.

"Well?" He pushed.

"What?"

"Who was that?"

"No one," Clara answered quickly. Too quickly.

"Clara…" he said.

Clara sighed. "His name is John," she gave him the least amount of information possible.

"Is he…?" He never actually finished the question but Clara inferred.

"He's just a friend," she said.

"You blushed," he observed.

"Did not."

He raised his eyebrows and gave her a knowing look. Clara shifted in her chair. "Do we have to talk about this now? You just went through a major ordeal, it doesn't seem like the appropriate time," she tried to change the subject.

"Oh come on, Clara. You're my daughter. I'm interested in your life. Humor me," her dad requested.

Clara huffed, but she obliged. "I've been seeing him for about two weeks."

"Is it serious?" He asked.

"I don't know."

"Do you want it to be?"

"I don't know," she answered honestly.

"Well what's that supposed to mean?" Her father asked.

It took a long time for Clara to answer. She hadn't really thought about it. All she really knew was that she liked it when she was with him and she missed him when he was gone. Although she just realized that since Valentine's Day, they had never missed a day of communication.

She thought about her conversation with him last night. _Hearts are breakable,_ she remembered thinking.

"It means I'm scared," she admitted.

"Scared of what?" Her dad asked softly, though it sounded like he already knew the answer.

"Well, it's just—aside from you, the only other person I truly loved was mum, and I lost her," Clara began, trying to find a way to explain. "And it was completely out of my control and there was nothing I could do to stop it, but it still hurt unlike anything I've ever known. But this is different. I _can_ control this, and I'm afraid that if I care too much and things go wrong, it's going to hurt again, and it's going to be my fault. I… I'm scared I'm going to mess up," she confessed. That was the first time she said any of it out loud and suddenly her feelings made a little more sense.

Her dad waited a bit, thinking of something to say before he started talking. The beeping of the machine he was still attached to was the only noise in the room and it made Clara extremely anxious as she waited for him to speak.

"You know, when I first started dating your mum I was scared too," he broke the silence. "I was walking her home from dinner and we were on her front step and it was pouring rain and all I had with me was a leaf and a speech I had spent an hour memorizing, and I had never been more terrified in my entire life." Clara had heard this part before, loads of times, but she listened patiently.

"Even after we'd been dating for close to a year, there were still times when I was afraid I was going to screw it all up. Then we got married and I was _still _scared that it wouldn't last. Turns out she ended up being one of the most important people in my life, and she spent the rest of her days with me. So yes, it did hurt when she left, but the heartbreak was worth every second I had with her, and I wouldn't trade it for anything," he said.

Her father never told her that part before and Clara's throat was starting to hurt like it usually did before she started crying.

"Being scared is normal Clara. But do you know what that means?" He asked.

Clara shook her head.

"It means it's worth it."

* * *

John was getting nervous. No, more than that. John was getting terrified. At first, he didn't have a clue why he couldn't focus at work or why he always felt bored and a tiny bit sad when he was at home. It wasn't until Clara called to tell him about her father when he finally realized what was going on. He was always thinking about her. Always. An eight year old would walk into his shop with her mother and John would think about how Clara wanted to work with third years. He would take the train every once and a while just to change things up and he would think about the second time he saw her. He would watch a movie in his flat and think it would be so much better if she was sitting next to him.

"I'm a wreck," he said to himself while he was driving home from work. "I'm a co-dependent wreck." It was an obvious exaggeration, but in his defense, John had never felt so strongly towards someone before.

Actually, now that he thought about it, he couldn't remember feeling anything for anyone. The realization slapped him in the face hard enough to make his head pound. He pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car.

"What the hell?" He whispered. _Surely,_ he thought, _surely I must've felt something like this before. I had brother right? I loved _him_ didn't I?_ Of course it would be a different kind of love, but still. All kinds of love have common characteristics. But the more John tried to remember how he felt, the more frustrated he got. He couldn't recall feeling anything. Was something the matter with him?

"You're going insane, John," he told himself as he started his car. "There's nothing wrong with you." He was trying to reassure himself but words weren't working so he took a detour.

Thirty-seven minutes later John was walking through the gates of Brompton Cemetery. His brother was buried in the western end of the cemetery in Area O, row three, grave seven. John had no idea why he remembered that detail when he couldn't even remember the last time he'd visited. It didn't take him long to find his brother's name among the dull grey headstones that popped up out of the ground as numerous as the customers in his shop near Christmas.

Benjamin Smith

1980 – 1999

John stood there for a long time staring at the characters carved into the stone. The irrational, metaphorical part of him felt like the name was staring back. His hands were balled into fists in the pockets of his tweed jacket and the brisk breeze was turning his cheeks pink. John heard a dog barking somewhere far away and he listened as the wind ruffled the leaves on the nearby trees, but his eyes never left the grave.

The longer he lingered, the more difficult it became to describe what he was feeling. Was it anger, disappointment, confusion, guilt? Maybe it was a combination of them all. Naming his emotions was the only hard part; he knew exactly why he was feeling them.

John knew that his brother Ben was five years his senior. He knew that Ben had died when he was nineteen. He knew the two of them had grown up together, but their parents weren't a part of the picture, or else John would have remembered them. He knew all those facts just like he knew that three plus two equaled five. But if you asked him what Ben was like, if he preferred to be called Benjamin or just Ben, what his favorite childhood memory was, or how it felt to lose his brother when he was only fourteen, John could not give you an answer.

That's when the terror took hold.

John's breaths shortened. A gust of wind came and seemed to drain him of all his strength and he fell to one knee. "Why can't I remember?" He heaved. His other knee fell to the grass as he gave in and buried his face in his hands. John tugged on his hair as if he could rip the memories out from deep within his brain. "What's wrong with me? Why haven't I felt anything?" He whimpered. His eyes were stinging with tears but he couldn't tell if it was because of his sudden breakdown or because he was pulling his hair so hard his scalp was burning.

John clamped his teeth around the knuckle of his thumb hard enough to make his brain block everything out and only register the pain in his hand. He unclenched his jaw when he tasted blood. He was breathing heavily and his hand fell to the ground. He had never been such a mess before and he would have been embarrassed, but messes were a common sight in cemeteries so he didn't worry about it too much.

As soon as John steadied his breathing he stood up, made himself presentable, and walked straight out.

When he got home, he couldn't bring himself to do anything more than sit on the couch and pretend to watch telly. It was easy to name his emotions now: exhaustion, sadness, and a bit of curiosity. Troubling questions were winding through John's head as the laughter of a studio audience erupted from the television, but one thought kept repeating itself over and over: If he couldn't remember his childhood, when the years passed, would he remember this, here and now? Would he remember how Clara makes him feel? The most frustrating part about asking himself those questions was his inability to answer them. There was only one thing he was sure about.

He was absolutely terrified.


	8. Chapter 8

**Sorry, I know it's been a while. School's been nuts lately.**

* * *

"Rough night?" Rick asked as he offered John a hand.

"Yeah, you could say that," John answered. He grabbed Rick's outstretched hand and stood up off the ground and remembered that he was in the back room of the shop he worked at. He did not look good. His shoulders were drooping, his eyes were tinged red, and his face seemed dangerously pale. He had plenty of time to get ready that morning but his button up shirt was wrinkled, his suspenders were uneven, and his bowtie and name tag were both uncharacteristically crooked.

John was in something of a slump. He hadn't eaten since breakfast yesterday and even that was small, nothing more than a quick scone on the way to work. He didn't intend to neglect food; he simply thought that the empty feeling in his stomach was being caused by his emotional vacancy, not his caloric intake. There were more reasons for John's sluggishness though. He had been awake for getting on twenty-five hours. Something about his recent revelation about his past had prevented his brain from calming down enough for him to fall asleep. The end result was John lying in bed for six and a half hours and staring at his ceiling until he gave up and read a book.

At 4:30 in the morning he finally got restless and decided he would walk to work. It was a ridiculously long way to walk and had he been thinking straight, John would never have considered it in a thousand years, but zero hours of sleep does strange things to a brain. For that reason, it wasn't until John was over half way to work that he realized he forgot his jacket, and he was walking the streets of London at five o'clock in the morning in February when it was about 5⁰C outside. Not his smartest move.

When he finally entered the shop around six thirty (an hour before he was required to show up), his arms would hardly move, he couldn't sense his feet, and his face felt blue. It might've looked blue as well but there was no one there to tell him. After finding his way to the back room he lay down next to some boxes of broken toys and promptly fell asleep.

That was how Rick found him exactly an hour later, and it's also what prompted him to ask, "Rough night?" When John's answer left something to be desired, Rick asked, "D'you party too hard?" It had never crossed Rick's nineteen year old mind that there could be a more serious reason for his twenty-eight year old suspender-and-bowtie wearing co-worker to be unconscious on the floor of the shop, other than excess amounts of alcohol the night before. But that was Rick. He had always assumed that life after school was all late nights and huge parties and John didn't feel like disappointing him with a boring story about self doubt, so he forced a laugh and said, "Sure."

For the hours of work before his lunch break, John was in limbo. He was vaguely aware of the customers coming in and out of the shop and he only barely remembered ringing people up at the desk, but for the most part he was surviving off muscle memory.

It was during this time of the day that John made the fatal mistake of thinking about his problems.

Last night, after hours of hating himself, John had come to one unalienable conclusion. He had definitely never been loved before. Once he figured that out the rest was obvious. He couldn't remember feeling anything because he had never felt anything worth remembering. Then after thinking about everyone significant he had interacted with in his life, he decided that if it wasn't anyone else's fault, that meant it must be his. Maybe there was just something fundamentally unlovable about him. And because he was too tired and because he was starving and because he felt irreparably broken, he decided there was nothing he could do to fix himself.

This detrimental line of thought was interrupted by the nap he took on his lunch break. It should be pointed out that since he was sleeping, he did not have time to eat. That did not help his well-being.

When John was at University, he a made a point to study early, often, and not into the early hours of the morning. It was the reason he actually got an adequate amount of sleep, and it was also the reason he had a shockingly small number of friends. Because of his responsible sleep schedule, John had no idea that getting an hour and a half of sleep is often much more difficult and hard to deal with than getting zero hours of sleep.

As he woke up to return to work after his forty-five minute nap, his new-found understanding of how the human body functions with nearly and hour of shut-eye weighed him down like an anchor. It was a miracle he lasted for as long as he did.

When his shift ended he suddenly realized he was without a car, which forced him to walk (still without a jacket) to the station and take the tube home, which was unfortunate because apparently Wednesday was "Cram-As-Many-People-Into-A-Car-As-Is-Physically-Possible-Day." John was forced to stand in the middle of the car between an angry mother clinging to her ten-year-old's hand, and a very large and very phlegmy man who coughed every thirty seconds.

Fantastic.

It was a long day for John Smith, and as soon as he stepped through the door of his flat, he heaved a sigh of relief. He had gotten one hour and forty-five minutes of sleep in the last day and a half, he hadn't eaten anything in a very long time, he walked to work at five in the morning in near freezing temperatures with no coat, he stood in a dangerously crowded train for half an hour, he was stressed, and over the course of the day he had come to the conclusion that he was broken and beyond repair.

It was probably a combination of these events that caused him to pass out on the floor of his kitchen. Right as his head smacked against the tile, his phone started vibrating on the kitchen counter.

* * *

Clara's week started off pretty lousy, what with her father having a heart attack and all, but Wednesday started off significantly better. She almost thought it would be the turning point of her week. After three days in the hospital, Clara's father was discharged and allowed to return home. Unfortunately, that would be the best part of the day. She had texted John that morning to tell him the news but two hours later she hadn't received a reply. _He's probably busy, _she reasoned. That didn't stop her from checking her phone every few minutes.

"Waiting for a call?" Her father asked. They were sitting at the small round table in his kitchen and there was tea on the table but Clara didn't drink it, which was odd, she loved tea. They were seated across from each other and they had spent the last few hours talking, catching up on each others' lives.

"No, no it's fine," she said, more to reassure herself than anything.

"You haven't touched your tea," he dad observed. "That means you're nervous."

"I'm not nervous," Clara said, "Just… Preoccupied."

Dave gave her a knowing look. She folded immediately.

"Okay, fine. I'm waiting for a call," she admitted.

"From John," her dad said. It wasn't a guess.

Clara shifted in her seat. "Yes." After a pause she continued. "I texted him this morning and he hasn't answered, which is totally okay I mean he was probably busy or something but he usually—and by usually I mean always—calls me on his lunch break and today he didn't, which I guess isn't really a problem because he might have had something more important to do than talk to me which is completely probable but now it's past four o'clock which means he is definitely off work and probably in his flat right now and…" Clara realized she had been talking extremely fast and that she sounded like a clingy sixteen year old in a high school relationship. She stopped and took a breath. "I don't know. I'm worried I guess," she said sheepishly.

Her dad was smiling at her.

"What?" She asked.

"I forgot how much you care about people," he said. "Every since you were little, you were always the doctor. I don't think I've ever heard a kid say 'how are you?' so many times in one day."

Clara blushed like she always did when her dad talked about stuff like that.

"Go ahead and call him," he suggested.

"What?" Clara asked, mostly out of shock that she didn't think of it sooner.

"You're going to worry about him until you know, that's just what you do, so call him," he said again.

Clara stood up and went in the other room before she dialed his number. After ringing eight times, her call went to voicemail. She decided to leave him a message just in case he was in the shower or something but a few minutes later she called his landline. He picked up on the fifth ring.

"Hello?" John sounded groggy.

"John?" Clara sighed in relief. "What happened to you? You sort of fell off the map today."

John didn't answer.

"Hello?" Clara looked at her phone to make sure the call hadn't dropped. "John, are you still there?" There were twelve seconds of silence before John spoke.

"I don't… I don't…" He was gasping and his voice was shallow. Now Clara was seriously worried.

"You don't what?" She said softly. John coughed and Clara heard something that sounded an awful lot like throwing up. She grimaced but before she could say anything he spoke again.

"I don't think I'm okay," he rasped. The next thing Clara heard was a loud clatter and she assumed he had dropped the phone.

She ended the call and rushed back into the kitchen.

"Something's wrong," she said quickly, "He sounded awful and he dropped the phone and I think he may have vomited."

"You should go check on him," Dave said.

"But dad you _just_ left the hospital. I can't leave you here by yourself," she reasoned. "He's probably fine, he's an adult, he can take care of himself."

"I'm an adult too, Clara, and he sounds like he needs you more than I do," he argued.

Clara debated in her head and she eventually came to the conclusion that they both knew what she was going to do.

"Alright, fine," she said. "But you promise you won't have another heart attack?"

"I promise."

"And you'll call me every day until I stop worrying about you?"

"You'll never stop worrying about me."

Clara smiled. "Fair enough. I'll call you when I get home." She was on the train to London thirty-three minutes later.


End file.
